Alex Darais...
Was the first Design professor I remember teaching the principles that he also lived every waking moment. His lessons and presence were so powerful, gentle and engaging that his class was virtually mandatory for all BFA candidates.
He was insatiably curious about every facet of design and art to the point that he actively worked in multiple traditional media. From sculpture to painting, photography, furniture and product design, architecture and so forth, Alex built, painted, printed and explored the ocean of opportunity afforded him as a professor in a school of fine arts. Although he wasn't necessarily a master of all the media he explored he was a master of a fearless approach to teaching by example.
I remember coming to class one morning when Alex brought photographs of the sink drains in the ceramics department. These images were fantastic swirls of color and texture - at once abstract and entrancing. They represented awareness of the beauty available in invisible or disregarded places. We were captivated by his simple enthusiasm for the photos and how he found them. We were equally enthused by his quest to understand the physics and fluid dynamics that could create the confluence seen in his photos.
Alex took us on a visit to see an eminent professor of biology who was equally known for his scholarly work and for the intensely detailed drawings he would make of the diatoms he had spent his life studying. Presented with his art I felt, for the first time, the now familiar rise of desire to create something as worthy of devotion as the art and concepts of the scientific truth he was so wonderfully illustrating.
The experience in this one class formed my approach to my life as an artist and gave me permission to straddle two worlds. I learned that I could have the soul of a scientist and the imagination of the artist - that I could love and serve both the intellect and the heart. From Alex Darais I learned that being and artist and a designer is a powerful and wonderful way of being and viewing the world.
My work in his class - taking one theme or subject and creating seven works of art in different media - remains as the most satisfying and memorable experience in my life as a student - then and now.
